A while back, someone very close to me was excited to share some new music they had discovered. You could hear it in the way they talked about it. They had found this new artist, really liked the music, and couldn't wait to play it for me because they thought I'd appreciate it too. There was something familiar about that moment. We've all done it—found an artist or song we love and immediately thought of someone else who needed to hear it.
So they played it for me.
Something didn't feel right.
I couldn't immediately tell you what it was, but my Spidey sense started tingling. Maybe it was something about the voice, the production, the image, or just the way everything fit together a little too perfectly. Whatever it was, I became curious enough to start digging.
What I found confirmed my suspicion.
The whole thing was AI.
The voice. The likeness. The songwriting. The production. The artist itself. The person my loved one thought they had discovered didn't actually exist.
My first reaction was disappointment. But that disappointment quickly turned into anger. Not because somebody had made AI-generated music. I've been very clear about the fact that I use AI myself and believe it can be an incredible creative tool.
I was angry because someone I care about had been duped.
They weren't knowingly listening to a fictional AI artist and deciding they liked the music anyway. That's completely different. They believed they had discovered a real artist. They were excited about that discovery. They brought that excitement to me and proudly shared it, the same way music fans have shared new artists with one another forever.
And nobody had given them a reason to believe that what they were experiencing wasn't what it appeared to be.
That's when this conversation stopped being theoretical for me.
I don't need AI-generated artists banned. I don't need everyone to share my feelings about them. But I do believe listeners deserve enough information to make that decision for themselves.
Because if I hadn't gotten suspicious and started digging, how were they supposed to know?
I’m Not Asking Anyone to Get Rid of AI Music
I've written about AI and music before, and my position continues to evolve as the technology evolves. I'm not anti-AI. Far from it. I use these tools. I think they're remarkable, and I think we're still scratching the surface of what they can become when placed in the hands of creative people.
I'm also not interested in telling someone else what they're allowed to listen to. If you enjoy completely AI-generated music, enjoy it. If a fictional AI artist releases a song that moves you and you don't care whether a human being ever stepped behind a microphone, that's your decision. I don't need that music removed from Spotify or Apple Music simply because it isn't something I personally want.
I just want the same choice.
Because for me, the person behind the music still matters. I want to know there's somebody there. Somebody whose story I can learn. Somebody I can support, follow, watch grow, see perform, or maybe someday meet. Music has never been only a collection of sounds coming through my speakers. Part of what I've always loved is the connection between those sounds and the human being who made them.
If the artist I'm looking at doesn't actually exist, I want to know that before I decide to invest in that connection.
The Music Business Is Starting to Wrestle With This
This conversation has changed considerably in just the past few months.
Spotify has begun rolling out an AI Persona designation intended to identify artist profiles that may represent AI-generated identities rather than actual people. Spotify has also said those personas will be excluded by default from its editorial and algorithmic recommendations unless a listener has demonstrated an interest in them. Importantly, Spotify distinguishes an AI persona from AI being used somewhere in the creation of a recording. Those are not automatically the same thing.
Apple has been developing its own approach through AI Transparency metadata, including disclosures involving recordings, compositions and artwork when AI has generated a material portion of the content. That phrase—material portion—may ultimately become one of the most important parts of this entire conversation, because determining what qualifies isn't nearly as simple as it sounds.
Even Suno, one of the companies driving generative music forward, has been building provenance and identification into its ecosystem. Suno says generated songs can carry Content Credentials based on the C2PA standard, creating machine-readable information about where a piece of content originated. It has also introduced fingerprinting and watermarking measures designed to make generated material more identifiable after it leaves Suno.
I find all of this encouraging. Not because I want AI music policed out of existence, but because the industry finally seems to be asking a more useful question.
How do we tell people what they're actually listening to?
I Still Want Someone on the Other Side
For all the technology involved in this conversation, my position ultimately isn't very technical.
If I discover that the lyrics, music, voice, image and artist persona were all generated, I'm probably not going to keep listening.
That's just me.
Someone else may hear the exact same song, love it and never care who—or what—created it. I don't think they're wrong. We're simply looking for different things from music.
I want the human connection.
I want to discover an artist and then learn more about them. I want to hear the next song. I want to see how they develop. I want to hear them talk about why they wrote something. I want to see them standing on a stage trying to recreate that record in front of an audience. If I really believe in what they're doing, I want the possibility of supporting the human being responsible for it.
That's why discovering afterward that none of it was real bothers me so much. It isn't because a computer somehow tricked my ears.
It's because I feel like someone tricked me.
And I've stopped believing I should be embarrassed when that happens. If something is deliberately presented to me using all the signals I've spent my entire life associating with an actual recording artist, I shouldn't have to become a detective before pressing Play.
Just Give Me the Choice
AI music isn't going away. I don't think trying to put that genie back in the bottle is particularly useful anymore.
We're moving into a much more complicated period where human musicians will work with AI, AI companies will work with record companies, artists will experiment with different levels of generative technology, and entirely synthetic performers will probably exist alongside traditional artists.
I'm okay with that future.
What I'm not okay with is removing the listener from the decision.
Tell me when the artist doesn't exist. Tell me when the voice is synthetic. Give me enough information to understand when something is substantially AI-generated without automatically treating every musician who used an AI tool as an AI artist.
Then let me decide.
That's really all I'm asking for.
I don't need anyone to protect me from AI music. I don't need it banned. And I certainly don't need everyone else to share my definition of what music is worth listening to.
I just want to know what I'm listening to.
Because if I'm going to become a fan, I still want someone there to be a fan of.
